Useless Bay

Once in Puerto Rico, I held on to a rock ledge for fourty five minutes, refusing to
jump into the lagoon below. My friends shouted encouragement and strangers
offered kind advice, until finally the man I loved crawled up the rock face and
stood behind me coaxing, “This is not a metaphor!”
He said this because he knew that I had already found a way to equate this failure
with all other failures, knew that my mind prison is a tangle of labyrinths, with
unwarranted symbolism around every stubborn corner. I laughed because it was
so accurate, and also because if I died going down those would be the last words I
heard.
Instead, I jumped and survived. And that night in bed he wrapped his arms around
me and whispered, “it was… a metaphor. Me, I am the metaphor. I climbed up
because I believe in you. Because I love you and I knew that you could do it.
Because I will climb up when you need me. Because you did need me.” And he
was already asleep before he could answer, leaving me to stalk my own hallways
for the meanings of the clutched rock, the shaking legs, the racing heart, the fall,
the smack, the coldest shock, and the man who climbed up to tell me to let go.
Not even a year later, he has moved into someone else’s body. And I am alone on
a beach in Washington. I have come here to hide from my sorrow. To try and
write poems that do not lead back to him. Instead, I find myself watching a pack
of young man throw stones into the air, before swinging giant bats of driftwood
smashing them into the water. The thwack, and pop, and plunk, echoing up and
down the otherwise empty beach.
And yes, the name of this beach is Useless Bay. And yes, the men are swinging as
hard as they can, of course. And yes, it is twilight. And yes, I am all alone. And I do
not want these metaphors. I would give them all back if I could. Even if it meant a
rainstorm would forever just be a rainstorm, a ladybug on my arm simply that.
Still, I would trade it for this relentless wait of meaning. This unfair promise of
always finding pattern where there need not be any - let the young men be just
young men, and not my heart forever swinging. Let the water be just water, and
not the vast loneliness, let the driftwood be driftwood, let the bay be unnamed.
Let the sunset not be my time running out but only the hour of the day. Only the
indication that bugs will soon be out. That the young men will pull on their
sweatshirts. That I should be heading home.
THE CHAOS

by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité

(Netherlands, 1870-1946)

Dearest creature in creation,

Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,

Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour

And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,

Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,

Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,

Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,

Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!

Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --

Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!
 INTEGERS LEARNING MACHINE

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